NTOK

    NORTH TULSA OKLAHOMA

    NORTH TULSA 1921: THE MASSACRE

    JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD

    40 square blocks were destroyed, thousands dead.

    We have heard "36 square blocks were destroyed" said a thousand times.  That was NORTH TULSA, 1921. The statement on the 40 square blocks was Ukraine, 2022.


    It peeked my attention because for 100 years we've been guessing how many North Tulsans died when a mass mob shot, burned, looted and bombed a population of 11,000, with about 6,000 accounted for after the embers were out.  5,000 is an awful lot of people to never receive a letter from, never hear thousands of their children, tens of thousands of their grandchildren and great grandchildren talk about...there is one book, published in the 1990s, written about the massacre by a survivor. One. 


    But, miraculously, there are survivors from those two days in American history whose eyewitness accounts still have some chance of helping us do what did not happen in 1921...and what is not happening in 2022.


    Stand up for what is right.


    JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD, a local organization, is giving us all an opportunity to do just that everyday this week.


    According to JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD, next Monday, on May 2, "members of the Greenwood descendant community" will be joined by "Tulsans in demanding justice for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and its continuous harm" at the Tulsa County Courthouse at 1p. 


    The organization sent out this message: We are just days away from Monday, May 2—the date of the historic motion to dismiss hearing where Tulsa County Judge Caroline Wall will hear our plea to allow the pursuit for justice for the Tulsa Race Massacre to continue. 


    The urgency...the court is set to either allow the case for justice for 1921 to proceed or dismiss the case, altogether.

     

    We may never know the number of people who died from north or south of Main Street in May and June of 1921, but, there is no mystery about who took on the job of rebuilding the Greenwood section of NORTH TULSA. The population that had grown from 6,000 to nearly 80,000 by the year 2000 built and rebuilt Greenwood/aka BLACK WALL STREET and NORTH TULSA many times over. 


    Our great-grandparents, our grandparents, parents, teachers, pastors, friends, neighbors kept life together in NORTH TULSA, flourishing for nearly a century. Over a century ago, the handful of Black pioneer families who founded First Baptist North Tulsa in the 1890s were joined by thousands of other families who would, over time, design and build thousands of homes, hundreds of businesses and churches, and dozens of schools and social institutions, today, stretching thousands of acres beyond Greenwood.


    A dismissal verdict will be a heavy blow toward turning all that work into dust.


    The hard pill to swallow is knowing most of that work took place during decades when North Tulsans had zero official political representation or power or status in the city of Tulsa or the state of Oklahoma. On the contrary, but for Tulsa County and the US federal government, schools and civil rights in NORTH TULSA would have, long ago, met the same fate its Greenwood district met in 1921.


    But, they didn't.


    NORTH TULSA, still, as my dad always said, is "The greatest place on Earth."



    R. Clardy/NTm 

    4/25/2022



    JOIN IN

    JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD

    At right, the schedule of events for a week focused on JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD> 

    take action

    Visit the JUSTICE FOR GREENWOOD FOUNDATION site to sign a petition and find other ways of supporting the 1921 Race Massacre Survivors and the future of Greenwood

    THE FOUNDATION

    the lawsuit

    Learn more about the historic lawsuit" demanding accountability and restitution for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and 100 years of continued harm."

    The Lawsuit

    YOU VOTED...

    1/7

    City of Tulsa

    Tulsa Mayor Bynum

    TULSA CITY COUNCIL

    District 1 Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper

    918.596.1921

    District 2 Councilor Jeannie Cue

    918.596.1922

    District 3 Councilor Christa Patrick

    918.596.1923

    District 4 Councilor Kara Joy Mckee

    918.596.1924

    District 5 Councilor Mikey Arthrell-Knezek

    918.596.1925

    District 6 Councilor Connie Dotson

    918.596.1926

    District 7 Councilor Lori Dector Wright

    918.596.1927

    District 8 Councilor Phil Lakin

    918.596.1928

    District 9 Councilor Jayme Fowler

     918.596.1929

    TULSA COUNCIL CHAIR HALL-HARPER

    USA/OKLAHOMA

    President Biden/Email> 

    US Sen Inhofe: 202-224-4721 

    US Sen Lankford: 202-224-5754  

    US Rep Hern: 918-935-3222  

    OK Governor Stitt: 405-521-2342 

    OK Sen Matthews: 405-521-5598  

    OK Rep Goodwin: 405-557-7406  

    OK Rep Nichols:  405-557-7391

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    The Greenwood Film Festival

    BE THERE...

    It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in North Tulsa...and then it wasn't.  At the corner of Apache and MLK, director DENNIS DELEMAR swooped in from LA with a film crew completing the work they'd debut in 2021 at the first Annual Greenwood Film Festival. The 2nd Annual Greenwood Film Festival starts in June.

    GREENWOOD FILM FESTIVAL 2022

    DENNIS DELEMAR

    THE FILMMAKER

    DENNIS DELEMAR is a South Carolina-born filmmaker, serious filmmaker, who moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma years ago to begin working on a film about a hidden history that fascinated him. Delemar was gripped, he was fully enveloped by the lingering spirit of Black entrepreneurship and cooperation that even a massacre could not destroy. He realized the commercial value of BLACK WALL STREET branding before anyone else.  He printed T-shirts, created a BLACK WALL STREET fashion line.  Dennis Delemar and his ZAYAN STUDIO had become the new BLACK WALL STREET.


    Fast-forward to 2021 and ZAYAN STUDIOS returned ready to premier BLACK WALL STREET An American Nightmare at their anxiously awaited first annual GREENWOOD FILM FESTIVAL in July, 2021 in NORTH TULSA at the Greenwood Cultural Center. Filmed in Tulsa, festival goers, particularly, recognized a KKK scene filmed at the corner of MLK and Apache that brought out hundreds of citizens who were convinced the actors were an actual threat.

    LEARN MORE @ THE 2022 GREENWOOD FILM FESTIVAL

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